After the arrest of the founder, Telegram began sharing information about thousands more users with the police

After changing its policy in response to the arrest of its founder last year, messaging app Telegram has greatly expanded its cooperation with law enforcement agencies around the world, sharing information about thousands more users than before.

In the US, Telegram provided 108 users’ IP addresses or phone numbers to police in connection with 14 cases in the first nine months of 2024, according to the company’s quarterly transparency reports. In the fourth quarter of the year, Telegram provided IP addresses or phone numbers for 2,145 users to US agencies based on 900 law enforcement requests.

In August, the French authorities arrested and charged Telegram founder Pavlo Durov with permission to trade drugs and abuse children on the platform. Durov until the end of September announced that the company will begin sharing additional information in response to legitimate law enforcement requests.

Transparency report data for 2024 collected by Telegram users in more than a dozen countries shows that the company has kept its promise.

In the first half of the year, Telegram provided French authorities with identifying information on only 54 users. From July to the end of September, the number of users increased to 632 (Durov was arrested on August 24). And in the last three months of the year, Telegram handed over information about 1,386 users to the French authorities.

In the UK, more than 98 percent of law enforcement requests for user information that Telegram responded to came in the fourth quarter. In Finland – 79%, and in Belgium – 74%.

Among the countries included in Telegram’s crowdsourced transparency data set reviewed by Gizmodo, India saw the most cooperation between Telegram and law enforcement. During 2024, the company provided IP addresses or phone numbers for 23,535 users in response to 14,641 requests from Indian authorities.

More than half of these requests—7,649—arrived in the fourth quarter. But unlike other countries, where Telegram responded to only a handful of legal requests for user data between January and September, data from India shows the company was responding to thousands of requests each quarter even before the policy changed.

Durov’s arrest in France comes after years of growing frustration with law enforcement that the company was not assisting with investigations in the way they have come to expect from other social media and messaging platforms.

Telegram, which allowed for large group messages that, while not encrypted, were still more private than other social media, became popular for a variety of illegal activities.

When Durov announced that Telegram would begin sharing additional information with law enforcement agencies, in addition to changes to the platform’s search function, he said: “These measures should deter criminals … We will not allow criminals to compromise the integrity of our platform with nearly a billion users.”